As a rule of thumb all words that begin with a,e,i,o,u get "an", the others "a".
Exceptions are:
*) words that are spoken as if a consonant is in front but begin with a vowel get "a" (e.g. a university)
*) words that are spoken as if a vowel is in front but begin with a consonant get "an" (e.g. an hour)
So to come back to your example it is "an instruction".
By the way it either is "Thanks" or "Thank you", but never "Thanks you".
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For the calendar you might want to fold some boxes and connect them somehow.